


Many Things

by avienexjel



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Past Child Abuse, Steve is an apologetic asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:59:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4187706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avienexjel/pseuds/avienexjel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where the Avengers group was formed in 2014 instead, so everyone is one year older than in the original Marvel movie.</p><p>SUMMARY:<br/> Steve is clueless, Clint is clueless, Natasha is smart, Bruce is observant, Thor is clueless, and Tony is...Tony.  (We all love Tony Stark!!!♡)</p><p>Or </p><p>Tony is magically transformed into his nine year old self and Steve learns that there is more to Tony than meets the eye, and also that he can be a really, really good parent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Many Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Tony dislike each other, to say the least. And Steve is an asshole in this chapter.

CHAPTER 1.

"Good morning," Steve said to Natasha as the assassin entered the kitchen, footsteps silent.  He wouldn't have noticed her at all, in fact, if he hadn't turned when he had.

"Steve."  Natasha inclined her head in acknowledgment and withdrew a plate from one of the cabinets.

"Hey Tasha," Clint said cheerfully as he walked through the doorway, bumping shoulders with the redhead.  "Hi Cap."  As he piled his plate high with bacon, eggs, and ham, he said, "Did you guys get Stark's new tablet?  He gave mine to me for a price that was almost free...I only had to get him coffee for him to give me the tablet.  Easy score, right?"  Clint proudly displayed the sleek sixth edition of the Stark Tablet.  "It's super fast and Stark did this weird thing that can actually let you FEEL the texture of the keys and stuff!"

"Interesting," Natasha said, rolling her eyes as she sipped a cup of tea.  

"What?" Clint said, shooting Natasha a look.  "Stark's awesome!"

"Your tablet tells the date, right?" Steve said suddenly, pouring himself a glass of juice.  He wasn't really a coffee guy; he never drank caffeine unless it was necessary.  And tea...blech.  He didn't know how Natasha could stand it.

Clint snorted in disbelief.  "Are you kidding me, Rogers?" he laughed.  "Sorry, Cap, I know you were born something years ago and missed a lot of stuff, but I think that even the FIRST iPod Touch told the date!"

"So...yes, right?" Steve asked, blushing.  Clint's rant had been more than a little confusing. 

"Yes!"  Clint threw up his hands in exasperation, and Steve sighed, knowing all too well that he was most likely bright red right now.  

"Give him a break," Natasha interjected, glancing sidelong at Steve.  

Clint groaned.  "You're not fun at all, Tasha."

Natasha rolled her eyes and grabbed Clint's wrist, prepared to drag him out of the kitchen.  "Wait!" Clint said, smacking Natasha with his free (well, the one without Natasha's death grip) hand, still holding the tablet.  "I need my plate too, you know..."  He grabbed his breakfast dish off the counter.  

"Clinton," Natasha warned.

"All right, all right," Clint said dejectedly.

"What's the date?" Steve repeated, still a little lost but also incredibly relieved and glad that Natasha had defended him.  He'd never been good at deflecting insults like Stark or Romanoff.  Speaking of Stark...where WAS the guy?  Bruce, Steve knew, was in the living room, and as for Thor...well, the blonde god was always up in Asgard or with his Midgardian girlfriend, Jane Foster.  He supposed it was one of the two for Thor.  Stark should have been down by now already, Steve thought, narrowing his eyes.  He couldn't just skip meals and events like movie nights with the team like he was already doing.

"It is currently Saturday, August 15th, 2014," Clint reported as he struggled to balance his plate on his arm with the tablet still in his hand.  

"Thanks," Steve replied, giving a little grin.  "Need any help with that plate of yours?"

"No," Natasha cut in, smirking.  "Clint here will be a big boy and carry his breakfast all by himself."

"Tasha," Clint whined but allowed himself to be dragged through the doorway and into the living room, his breakfast plate still wobbling precariously on his arm.  

Steve, who was still heaping food onto his plate--after all, super soldiers need a lot of food, even if they can survive longer than most without it--suddenly froze.  His glass of juice thunked down onto the counter, thankfully missing the floor, and he set his plate down slowly.  August 15th...that was Howard's birthday.  Howard, who had been one of Steve's greatest friends and had died while Steve was still stuck in the ice.  Howard Stark.  

Steve stumbled into the living room, no longer hungry.  His thirst was already quenched; half a glass of juice was sufficient enough anyway to sate it.  Bruce looked up at Steve as the unusually pale man entered the room.  "I didn't know super soldiers could get sick," Bruce commented.  "Or is it something else?"  Steve could feel Natasha's eyes burning into him and Bruce's boring right into his own.  

"It's just that...one of my good friends...he died while I was frozen and I just realized that today is his birthday," Steve mumbled.  

"Who is he?" Natasha wanted to know.  The assassin pursed her lips, leaning forward on the couch.

"I, um, he, he was..."  Steve swallowed.  "Stark's father.  Howard.  He...we were good friends, really good friends."  Steve still couldn't understand, for the life of him, how Tony came to be so different from his father.  They still had the same charm and that aura that pulled everyone towards them, but Tony played it up.  And Steve had to admit that for all of Howard's charm, the man couldn't possibly hope to go up against Tony.  Tony...Tony was...magnetic.  Whether you loved him or hated him didn't matter.  What mattered was the attention you paid to him, and how your eyes would follow wherever he went; and how you would spend all your time thinking about him, whether or not the thoughts were positive.

Tony was magnetic.  And also brash, and bold in a bad way, and rude, and reckless, and careless, and had no regard for the rules, and was stunningly handsome in a rakish kind of way--Steve stopped himself.  So, Tony wasn't bad looking; in fact, he could be called quite attractive--but stunningly handsome?  Rakish?  Where had he gotten _those_ thoughts from?

Well, all in all, Howard was a much better man than Tony, Steve was sure of it.  Worth ten million times more, in fact.  Tony had probably just been spoiled, or just had a bad attitude in general.  Steve knew, without a doubt, that Howard had been a great father.  How couldn't he have been?  To think otherwise...would be impossibly absurd.

Snapping out of his thoughts as he heard his name being spoken,  _loudly,_ he uttered a very eloquent, "Huh?"

Clint smirked.  "What I said was, shouldn't you be off celebrating or mourning, whatever one you want to do, with Tony then?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Bruce blurted out suddenly, then promptly turned red.  Or pink.  Same thing.  

"Why?" Clint asked.

"I dunno, it's just that...I don't think that Tony would want company on his dead father's birthday," Bruce said a little hesitantly, although his tone was still blunt and spoke volumes.  Natasha's gaze sharpened on Bruce.

"Oh," Clint said.

"So Tony's just locked himself up in his workshop, then?" Steve said irritably, knowing that he was being a little harsh, but--"He's not the only one in mourning, you know."

"We understand that, Steve," Natasha said gently, but then added more firmly--"but Tony's never been good at dealing with emotions."

"Yeah, but, well, Tony--"

"Tony what?" said the billionaire loudly, raising both eyebrows.  Sauntering into the living room, he grinned.  "Morning everyone.  Miss me?"  Steve resisted the urge to roll his eyes--apparently that was a thing nowadays.  Tony was such a self-centered jerk.  Couldn't he think about anyone else, like his  _dad?!_

"No," Bruce said dryly.

Tony merely laughed and clapped Bruce on the back.  "Hey, Big Guy."

"Where's Pepper?" Natasha asked, hoping to distract Tony.  It didn't work.

"Pepper's across the country in California, doing a little business here and there," Tony said, then returned to the original subject--him.  "So, what about me, Spangles?"

Steve bristled at the nickname, and then decided to just outright say it.  "Did you forget your own father's birthday?" he snapped, suddenly angry.  "Howard Stark?  August 15th?  Today?  Or, like the self-centered bastard you are"--Tony was too taken aback to notice that Steve Rogers, perfect little Captain America, had just SWORE--"did you completely  _forget?!!"_ Breathing a little heavily, Steve stopped, looking pointedly at Tony with disapproval that could fill an entire ocean.  

"Steve," Natasha began, but the super soldier waved her off angrily.  

"Howard was a better man than you'll ever be," Steve snapped to the still-shocked Tony.  

 _"Steve!"_ Natasha snarled.  Steve shut up immediately, his mouth still a little open.  He'd never seen Natasha this riled up before.  "That's enough."

"No."  Everyone looked at Tony, whose eyes were dull and had lost their brightness.  "It's okay.  He's right."

"Tony," Natasha said softly (softly?!) like it pained her to speak.

But then Tony's eyes narrowed.  "I'll never be a better man than Howard in your eyes, maybe, but Howard was a dick and a drunk and you deserve to have died with him when he fucking crashed his own car!  I was BORN better than that shitty little prick, you hear, so go stick a poker up your own ass you motherfucking BITCH!"  Bruce's eyes widened minimally at Tony's outburst, but he said nothing.  

Natasha nodded, and Tony, suddenly looking like a claustrophobic person stuck in a tiny metal box, half-ran, half-walked into the kitchen, abruptly feeling more tired than the time he had stayed up for four and a half days straight.  (He had passed out in the workshop.)

Bruce knew what Tony had been through as a kid, because he had gone through the exact same thing--though, he suspected, not as brutally.  He could tell by the way Tony acted, even though it had taken him a couple months to figure out the other man's behavior.  Tony Stark was an incredibly good actor.

As for Natasha...she knew after some snooping around.  Not in SHIELD's files, of course--after all, she was an assassin, not a hacker--but through hospital records and the like.  Tony had been in and out of the hospital more times than she could count, with various injuries--broken arm, broken collarbone, multiple bruises, burns, and cuts so deep that they required stitches--so...well, it wasn't that hard to figure it out.  After all, even with a reckless person like Tony, there's only so many times you can get hurt by accident.  And Tony certainly wasn't clumsy, while not as agile or flexible as Natasha herself.

Now, the Widow turned to Steve.  "You shouldn't have done that."

"How come I'm the one getting reprimanded?" Steve protested.  "And Tony got to walk away, just like that?"

"Life is more complicated than that," Natasha retorted.  "You had a sheltered life, more sheltered than you're willing to admit."

"I never even  _knew_ my father," Steve shot back, his temper rising.  "My family was poor.  I was made fun of every day because I wanted to join the army, but I was too small.  Too thin.  Too WEAK!"  Natasha wanted to say, 'Well, then, you shouldn't have said you wanted to join the army in the first place' but stopped herself just in time.  She didn't really want to make things worse, and they were already pretty bad.

Steve realized that he was shouting now, but he didn't care.  "And look at Tony!  Rich since he was born, spoiled all the time too, I bet, while I didn't have even a  _penny_ to my name!  Tony's never had to worry about anything; just look at him!  Typical--the rich playboy who flaunts his money to all the people who don't have the good life!"

In the kitchen, Tony took a deep breath and composed himself, willing away the near panic attack and slipping back on his mask with practiced ease.  "Actually," he drawled, appearing in the doorway behind Steve all of a sudden, "I donate millions to charities each year."

Steve stumbled a little but then regained his footing in their argument.  "Just so that people can gloss over how great you are, I bet.  You're the people's perfect image!"

"Me?"  Tony barked out a harsh, grating laugh.  "You're the one who always wants to be perfect.  Honorable Captain America.  Patriotic Captain America.  No one fucking gives a damn anymore, Rogers, because until a couple months ago, the whole world thought you were DEAD!"

Steve opened his mouth then closed it, his temper reaching beyond what he could take.  "HOWARD WAS NICE AND CARING AND WAS DETERMINED TO DO WHAT WAS RIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY!" he shouted.  

"HOWARD WAS AN ASSHOLE WHO DIDN'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT HIS OWN SON!" Tony yelled back.  "THE ONLY TIME HE EVER PAID ATTENTION TO ME WAS WHEN HE THOUGHT I HAD 'MISBEHAVED'!"  

"Enough!"  Natasha slammed her hand down onto the coffee table, effectively startling and shutting up the two seething men for a moment.  "Tony, get your coffee and go back to your workshop.  And Steve...could I have a word?"  Her tone told Steve that it wasn't really a question but a command.  Nevertheless, he wasn't going to listen to Natasha defend Tony.  That lazy rich prick didn't deserve to be defended anyways! 

As Tony headed for the elevator down the second--and last--hallway, about two rooms diagonally from the living room, (he hadn't even bothered to go and pick up his coffee) he suddenly felt sick. Dammit... Doubling over, the pain in his gut suddenly got worse and he opened his mouth, prepared to retch. Abruptly, agony shot though Tony--so sudden that he had no time to even be surprised--twisting and clawing and ripping. Tony screamed.  


End file.
